Ten Tips for Email Marketing Success
Email marketing is more flexible than most other kinds of marketing, but that does not mean it can just be put on the back burner. While automation software and scheduling abilities make it easy to set up a bunch of emails and have them sent out without really need to perform any maintenance, giving your campaign a little attention from time to time will ensure more returns and far more success.
Picking the right system for the building and scheduling of your email is the very first step to success, but we have plenty of other tips that make it easy to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns. The very best email marketing tactics are a result of these tips, tailoring them to the needs of your business and the expectations of your customer or client.
- Know your audience. It’s the basic foundation of any marketing tactic and by no means the most difficult information to discover, especially because email marketing is an opt-in branch of advertising. Because your audience decides that they want to receive your emails, you will likely already have a good idea of what kind of information they want to hear.
- Provide a clear incentive. Offering something in return for an email list subscription is a great way to encourage even wary individuals to sign up. For online shops and retailers, the incentive is pretty clear—discounts and promotions delivered right into the inbox. For bloggers and other types of businesses, the incentive might not be as clear. Providing an ebook, an informational PDF, or other helpful content in return for a subscription is often plenty of incentive.
- Streamline the sign-up process. Not only does asking too many questions ward off those who are slow to hand out personal information (no matter how much they love your blog, business, or store), it lengthens the subscription process and gives the individual a moment to decide against signing up. Make the process as easy as typing their email address into a box and clicking “Sign Up!”
- Craft your message to strengthen brand loyalty and increase profits. No matter what kind of website or business you run, the point of email marketing is to keep consumers on the hook. Craft the content you send out to that end, by providing value and by make sure it is always relevant to the needs and/or desires of that consumer. Because of the personal nature of email, it’s a great place to get personal and really build that customer or client relationship.
- Be honest and never abuse your list. This is one of the biggest mistakes that email marketers can make. By handing their email address over to you, your clients or customers have entrusted you with personal information and it would be very bad to breach the innate trust that is formed between customer and corporation by selling your email list to someone else or using it for purpose other than those expressly stated in your privacy policy.
- Make sure you have the right format. Not every kind of email will work on every device, but you have a higher chance of more emails working on more devices if you use HTML and rich media formats to send your emails.
- Don’t forget about white space. You know that you want to cram as much information into the limited space of an email (and you do have limited space, whether or not you have any kind of length or character limit—your receivers are only going to scroll so far), but it’s important to make sure that all included information is actually readable. Don’t shove it so full of text and media that it actually confuses the person that receives it.
- Test your messages. This is one of the most overlooked steps of any email marketing campaign. Always test your messages in a range of different providers so you know exactly what they are going to look like when they arrive in your subscriber’s box.
- Make use of your subject line. The subject line is what will mean the difference between your emails just being deleted or being opened and even forwarded. Make sure it is compelling, urgent, and valuable. Be as specific as possible and never use words or phrases that are commonly used by spammers.
- Personalize the messages. While you might choose to have many different email lists which allows you to tailor your message to specific branches of your audience, at the very least, each email should contain the individual’s name. The more personalized and targeted you can make the email, the better your returns and response will be—today’s consumer wants to feel recognized as an individual.